Police said the suspect was taken to the police station and did not provide any other information. (Representative)
Kongsberg, Norway:
A man armed with a bow and arrow killed five people and injured two others in southeastern Norway on Wednesday, police said, adding they had arrested the suspect.
The motive for the attacks in several locations in the city center of Kongsberg was unknown, but police said terrorism could not yet be ruled out.
Police officer Ovind Aas said he could “unfortunately confirm” that five people were killed. He told a press conference that both the injured have been kept in the critical care unit at the hospital, but there is no threat to their lives.
One of the injured was an off-duty police officer who was in a store, which was attacked at several places.
“The person who committed this act has been arrested by the police and to our knowledge only one person is involved,” Aas said.
He said that “looking at the incidents, it is natural to assess whether it is a terrorist attack”.
“The arrested person has not been interviewed and it is too early to say anything about his intentions,” he said. “All possibilities are open,” he said.
TV2 channel said the alleged attacker was from Norway and had a medical history – information that was not confirmed by the authorities.
– ‘Running for your life’ –
A woman who witnessed some of the attacks, Hanshin, told TV2 that she had heard a disturbance, then saw a woman taking cover and “a man at the corner with an arrow in a quiver over his shoulder and a bow in his hand.” was standing”.
“Later, I saw people running for their lives. One of them was a woman holding a child by the hand,” she said.
Police said the suspect was taken to a police station in the nearby town of Dramon, but did not provide any other details about the man, including whether he had known officers before.
The attack was reported to police at 6:13 pm (1613 GMT) in a city of 25,000 people about 80 kilometers (50 mi) west of the capital Oslo. The suspect was arrested at 6:47 pm.
“These events shook us,” Prime Minister Erna Solberg said on her last day in office.
On Thursday, she will hand over the post of prime minister to Jonas Gahr Store, whose Labor Party won the parliamentary election.
In Kongsberg, police closed the scene of the attack urging the public to stay home.
Television footage showed ambulances and armed police in the area. A helicopter and a bomb disposal team were also sent to the spot.
Police in the Scandinavian country are generally not armed, but after the attack the National Police Directorate ordered that officers be armed across the country.
Norway’s intelligence service PST was alerted, spokesman Martin Bernsen told AFP.
Asked about the possibility of terrorist intent, he said, “It’s all conjecture at the moment.”
– Arrows sticking in the wall –
Public broadcaster NRK’s website published an image sent by a witness of a black arrow sticking to a wall.
In other photos, competition-grade arrows can be seen lying on the ground.
Norway rarely experiences such violence, but 10 years ago far-right extremist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in the country’s worst massacre since World War II.
Breivik first set up a bomb in Oslo next to the building that housed the prime minister’s office, then went on a shooting spree at a summer camp for left-wing youth on the island of Utoya.
In another right-wing attack, self-proclaimed neo-Nazi Philipp Manshaus set fire to a mosque on the outskirts of Oslo in August 2019 before it was overpowered by worshipers, leaving no one seriously injured.
However, he had previously shot and killed his half-sister, who was adopted from China, in what prosecutors dubbed a “racist act”.
Many well-planned jihadist attacks have also been foiled by security services.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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